Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky

wasn't only my memory that relived the past, it was my heart itself. This anger, impatience, this eager thirst for happiness, I remembered them all. Yet no real woman awaited me, just a phantom, created from the same fabric as my dreams. A memory. Intangible, cold. So you need warmth, do you, old man with a withered heart, you need a little fire? I look around at my house and am stunned. I, who used to be so full of energy, so ambitious, can I really be living like this, dragging myself from my bed to my table, then back to my bed again, day after day? How can I live this way? It's as if I no longer exist. I don't think about anything, don't love anything, don't desire anything. There are no newspapers, no books in my house. I fall asleep beside the fire, I smoke my pipe. I stroke my dog. I talk to the housekeeper. That's all, nothing more. I want my youth back. Come back to me, youth. Speak through me. Tell this Helene who is so sensible, so virtuous, tell her that she was lying. Tell her that the man who loved her isn't dead, that even though she quickly buried me, I'm still alive and I remember everything. She was lying. The real woman hidden inside her, the passionate, happy, daring woman who delighted in pleasure-I'm the only one who really knew her, no one else. Francois owns only a pale, cold imitation of that woman, as artificial as an epitaph on a tombstone, but I once possessed what is now dead and gone, I possessed her youth.
    Come on now . . . that last glass of wine has left me strangely elated. I must get hold of myself. The housekeeper is looking at me in astonishment. The soup has been on the table for a long time, yet I've been sitting here in the kitchen, in the large wicker armchair, scrawling these words, smoking, kicking away the dog who's come over to be stroked. I need to be alone. I don't know why. I can't bear the presence of another human being tonight. All I want are ghosts .. . I'm not hungry. I tell Louise to clear up and go home. She shuts up the hens. All these familiar sounds . . . The shutter that creaks, the latch that squeaks, the sigh of the bucket as it is let down into the well with its bottle of white wine and slab of butter; it will keep them cool until tomorrow. I push away the bottle standing next to me. I push it away, then change my mind; I pick it up again, fill my glass. The wine gives my thoughts clarity. And now, Helene, now we're alone.
    It's exactly what a virtuous woman would say to her husband: "What happened twenty years ago was nothing but a moment of madness." Really? A moment of madness! I say that it was the only time you were truly alive. Ever since then you've been pretending, you've gone through the motions of living, but that true passion for life, the kind you savour only once in a lifetime-remember the taste that young lips have: like ripe fruit-you experienced that with me and with me only. "Poor old Silvio, my dear friend, poor Silvio in his rat hole." Is it really true that you forgot me? I have to be fair. I forgo t y ou as well. It took hearing what that young woman said yesterday, and Colette 's despair and futile shame and, above all, drinking too much wine to bring you back to me. But the next time I see you I won't let you go so quickly, you can be sure of that. You will hear the truth, you will hear it from me, just as you did in the past when I was the first man to make you understand how beautiful your body was and what a marvellous source of pleasure to you. (You didn't want to, you were shy and innocent back then .. . Still, you gave in. And what a lover you became.) And how we loved each other ... For, you understand, it's very convenient to say, "I lost my head for a while, it was a few weeks of madness, I shudder to think of it." But you can't erase the truth, and the truth is we loved each other. You loved me so much that you forgot Francois even existed, so much that you did whatever I wanted in order not to lose me.
    Oh, yes, just now you wore